


Death's Other Kingdom

by vellaphoria



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Body Horror Elements, Demon Oikawa Tooru, Final Haikyuu Quest, Implied/Referenced War Crimes, Knight Iwaizumi Hajime, M/M, Torture, unhealthy relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 18:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14407524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: Hajime wanted to turn on his heel and march back into the forest. He wanted to tell Kageyama that he might as well take his idiotic quest and burn it to ashes now. At least then he'd save the Demon King the trouble.But, no. He and common sense seemed to have had a falling out in recent years; despite hardship and certain death, Hajime had never really been able to let this sort of thing lie.Least of all when Tooru was involved.





	Death's Other Kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> Is it like this  
> In death's other kingdom  
> Waking alone  
> At the hour when we are  
> Trembling with tenderness  
> Lips that would kiss  
> Form prayers to broken stone.
> 
> \- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (excerpt)

“You brought this on yourself,” Tooru told him once, beneath the ruins of the enemy’s castle. After the peace treaty had been signed, then broken. “On them, too. I want you to know that you could have stopped this if you had made better choices, Iwa-chan. If you'd been a bit more ... _loyal_.”

His eyes flashed red. In the torchlight, his horns glistened. Hajime strained against the thick iron bands holding him to the table.

“But,” Tooru continued, trailing a single, clawed finger up Hajime’s torso; a mockery of tenderness, “more than that, I want you to remember that what I do, I do for you. Even after what you’ve done, after you _betrayed_ me, I still love you, Hajime.”

He smirked, a slash of bone-white against the dungeon’s shadows, “And I always will.”

The claw dug in, tearing. Far above them, the fires burned endlessly into the night, a haunting blue bright enough to drown the stars.

 _Love_ did not cause this kind of destruction.

Love did not stop his screams.

**…**

Hajime had been tracking them since they first entered the valley.

Through the pass and over sharp mountain crags. Into the deeply forested foothills. And now, finally, to Yukigaoka’s outskirts.

They made good time for people who didn’t know these woods. Better time for people constantly looking over their shoulders. Their nervousness bled into the air around them, but they had enough presence of mind to leave few footsteps or broken branches behind.

It wouldn’t be enough.

Even though the forest curved up around them, thick enough to turn late afternoon into dusk, there was nowhere they could hide. Only places where they thought they could.

Like the clearing up ahead. It was small. Secluded. Not a bad place to rest if you were looking for somewhere close to the town but far enough away to escape notice. A good place to plan a raid, even.

Their leader glanced around furtively, checking the tree line and the nearby outcropping of rocks for any who might be trying to ambush them. Were Hajime wearing his plate armor, she would have seen him immediately with all that shining steel sticking out like scattered sparks against the night.

But Hajime was traveling light, so to speak; all dark fabric and leather that swallowed the sun and gave nothing back.

She didn’t see him.

Satisfied, she turned back to her band. Five others stood in a loose circle, listening as she detailed the plan to get in and out of the town’s storehouses before daybreak.

Had they been his soldiers, he would have reprimanded them for incautious behavior behind enemy lines and sent them running laps in full armor. The next time, they would think twice before assuming at any point that they weren’t about to be attacked.

But Hajime hadn’t commanded that kind of obedience from anyone in a long time, and it wasn’t hard to see that these were far from soldiers. Some of them may have been, once, but most of them looked too young to have fought on either side in Hajime’s time. They were too young for life on this side of the law, too, and Hajime’s chest panged at the thought of so much wasted potential.

But he had a duty here, even if it was one Yukigaoka hadn’t initially asked of him, and his own potential, the wasting of which he hadn’t yet been able to forgive himself for.

Hajime shifted his stance in the darkness and drew his broadsword, the only gift left to him that he still allowed himself to use. The moment the tip of the blade broke free of the scabbard, he felt the heat building in his chest. Like a banked fire tempted by loose, thin paper, the dark metal drew it, the sigils engraved down the blade’s center glowing dimly against the shadows. Hajime strained, breathing evenly to stifle the coals behind his ribs and the lick of blue flame that traced the blade itself. It would do no good to give away his position prematurely.

He waited, crouching, just long enough for them to let their guard down and take their hands from their weapons. To speak just loud enough that he knew they did not think anyone might be listening.

He waited too long, as it turned out, since the moment he shifted into position to strike, the leaves across the clearing rustled and gasped.

The bandits looked in unison, turning away from Hajime’s position, and what might have proved a convenient distraction chilled Hajime to his bones when a small child – Natsu, the Hinata family’s youngest, who he recognized from the village – was pulled out, fighting the entire way, by the woman who was presumably the bandits’ leader. She held a wooden practice sword tightly, though hitting her captor with it did little.

“Fuck!” One of the bandits closer to Hajime hissed, taking a step back. “She’ll raise an alarm if she escapes.” He glanced nervously at their leader. “Should we…?”

The leader gave him a look that could wither a forest whole and pulled out her knife. None of them fought her on it, instead standing mute and uneasy as she brought the blade to the child’s throat.

It was their distraction that undid them.

The first of them never saw Hajime coming. At the sight of the child, his hand had gone back to his weapon, but he never had a chance to use it. In the space of two breaths, Hajime had stepped forward and sunk the point of the blade clean through his shoulder, severing the muscles and tendons in the man’s sword arm. Around the heated metal, his skin sizzled, demonfire licking around the wound to sear his veins and char his flesh.

The others turned at his agonized scream, nearly jumping out of their own skins at the sight of a dark-garbed figure standing in the shadows of the forest surrounding the clearing, illuminated only by the eerie blue glow of the fire spouting from his blade.

At least, that’s what his soldiers had said it looked like, back when he’d taken to frightening them out of their inattention at their posts.

There had been less maiming, then.

He left the blade in just long enough to staunch the blood – and, likely, make the arm inoperable until the man found a mage good at fixing flesh – before planting his boot on the center of the man’s back and shoving him off the sword’s tip. He fell forward with a pained thump, clutching at his arm as tears streamed down his face and small whimpers escaped his throat.

If Hajime had had any doubts that these were amateurs, the man’s writhing erased them. He had seen soldiers and raiders alike take wounds twice as bad and go right back to trying to kill him.

“What the – ?” The leader trailed off, shock etched in every line on her face. There were many of them; if any of this group had fought in the war, it would be her.

The leader’s grip on Natsu tightened, causing her to wince.

“You can still walk away,” Hajime said. The fallen man’s blood sizzled in the flames flickering across the broadsword. Around their leader, the other raiders drew weapons, shifting nervously. The farthest one slipped into the trees quietly, unnoticed by his companions until he broke into a run in the opposite direction.

The other raiders only spared him a glance, but the leader nearly turned away from Hajime to shout profanities at him as he left them to their fate.

Hajime suspected he would not be back.

Once he was too far away to hear her, she turned back to Hajime in a burning fury. “You,” she sneered, “are in _no_ position to negotiate.” She pulled Natsu closer, her blade cutting a small gash in the child’s skin. Even from across the clearing Hajime could see the cut was jagged from the shake in her hands. Tears glistened in Natsu’s eyes.

“Try anything," the raider said, "and this one _dies_.”

Hajime blinked. _Do you_ know _who I am_ , his mind whispered in that singsong, whiny voice he had learned and re-learned to ignore with a passion. A more egotistical person might have actually vocalized it, threatening and self-aggrandizing, acting offended if their opponent hadn’t heard of them by reputation alone.

But Hajime had never been that vain. He wasn’t an idiot, either.

He stepped forward, the blade’s fire springing to new life with his sharp inhale, and swung. The man wasn’t quick enough, and Hajime slashed a wide, burning arc across his chest before he could even raise his shield. The wound was nonlethal and mostly shallow, but it was enough to force the man to the ground as he tried to staunch the bleeding. The woman who followed was luckier, but not by much. She at least managed to get her sword between them, to catch his blade.

For a certain value of the word ‘catch.’

The dark metal and demonfire ate through her tempered steal, cutting through it and the hardened leather of her armor as like thin paper. She shrieked as the sword sank deeply into her shoulder, carving into it so far it nearly dethatched. Like the earlier raider, she’d have to find a mage if she didn’t want to lose it.

Bracing a foot on her sternum, he kicked her back and off the blade, letting her fall to the ground in a bloody, screaming pile.

 _Amateurs_ , the voice whispered, but one look at Natsu and Hajime only felt a little worse about it.

The next two – the last two before the leader – rushed him at once. It wasn’t a bad tactic for overwhelming a single, more powerful enemy.

It wasn’t a great idea either; Hajime had lived through more battles than they had years between them. This, comparatively, was nothing.

The first one swung high and Hajime ducked, spinning around and letting the momentum of the man’s blade carry him towards the other attacker. The man swung wide at the last second, barely missing his companion as he shrieked and jumped back. Hajime didn’t give them time to recover, his blade swinging around to catch the one he’d just dodged on the backs of his legs. He cut something important, too, based on the way the first man went down and nearly tripped the second.

Rather, he did trip him, but he never hit the ground.

The trajectory of the second attacker sent him stumbling forward, onto the sword point Hajime had angled at his abdomen. In the end, gravity did the work for him, and all Hajime had left to do was to unsheathe his sword from the man’s smoking, scorched chest. If he’d calculated that correctly, the sword hadn’t struck anything vital, and the fire would keep the man from bleeding out.

When Hajime glanced down, the man was still breathing.

He turned to their leader.

She was clutching at Natsu like a lifeline; a human shield between her and the inevitable. But she had also split her focus. She was so wrapped up in staring in horror at Hajime that she jumped in surprise, yelping when Natsu dug her teeth into the woman’s hand without warning. She flinched, releasing her in the process, and Natsu scurried off to the tree line and relative safety.

Hajime resisted breathing a sigh of relief; this sort of thing was always easier when he didn’t have to work around hostages.

The woman held her dagger between them. Hajime did not slow his advance.

“Who _are_ you, demon?” Her voice was shaky. The sword was the only demonic thing about Hajime. Then again, the way she said the word as more of an address than an insult. It told him more than he wanted to know about where this particular group of bandits had come from.

“Does it matter?” Hajime asked, scowling.

She stared at him wildly. Her eyes flicked to the blade, to the small inferno of blue flame, to the spot where the wrappings covering the sword's insignia had been burnt off.

“I know that blade,” she muttered, almost to herself, before her eyes widened in horrified realization.

“ _You_ ,” she spat, though her anger was belayed by the thick aura of fear just beneath it.

Hajime didn’t respond. He kept his blade between them, illuminating the clearing in an eerie blue light that the late afternoon sun did little to temper.

“My sister is _dead_ because of you.”

“Did I kill her?” Hajime asked. The words were quiet, but to him they echoed through the clearing all the same.

Her glare carried a heat scorching enough to turn sand to glass.

“It would have been a better death,” she hissed, tears in her eyes. It was an expression he had seen often in the last decade, leveled at him more often than not.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Even after all this time, he still had nothing better to say.

The woman spat on the ground between them and raised her blade. Her charge would have been foolhardy if, when she locked blades with Hajime, she didn’t have the skill to back it up.

A veteran of the war after all, then.

They traded blows like lightning strikes; faster than the untrained eye could follow and sending sparks everywhere. It was a challenge to keep up with her _and_  avoid landing a killing blow. Blood rushed through Hajime’s veins at the effort. It had been a long since he last faced someone good enough to make him break a sweat. Too long.

Hajime struck forward and the woman parried. She swung her blade wide and Hajime ducked under it. He tried to trip her and she dodged, jumping deftly around his outstretched leg and spinning to press her advantage.

It’s a shame, Hajime would later think, that it made her cocky.

Forgetting the skill of her opponent and forgetting the discrepancy in the quality of their swords, she locked blades with him once more, pressing him to the ground with a strength he wouldn’t have expected from her smaller frame.

If she’d had the right kind of weapon, it might have even worked.

But regular steel had never been a match for the devil’s iron and demon fire of the blade Hajime carried.

The extended contact melted her sword against his, and Hajime rolled to avoid being hit with the molten slag. The woman threw her sword away, yelping in pain at the burn the superheated handle had left on her hand, even through its wrappings.

Weaponless, she stared at Hajime in horror, even as she shifted back into a fighting stance. Planting the tip of his blade in the ground in a way he would have admonished his soldiers for doing, Hajime used it to push himself upward, leveraging his weight against it until he was standing to face the woman once more.

She flinched back, her unburned hand clenching and unclenching for a blade she no longer had.

She expected to die here; he could see it in her eyes.

If Hajime let her think that for a moment longer than necessary, no one else was here to judge him for it.

Eventually, once her sweat had likely run cold and the woman’s adrenaline had faded into small, frantic shaking, he re-sheathed his sword.

“If I find you in these woods again,” Hajime said, doing his level best to sound unconcerned with the woman’s attempt to kill him, “you won’t leave them. If you had killed that child, you would already be dead. Run, and be thankful. Your sister likely had had no such chance.”

For a moment, he thought she would rush him. After all, anger born of loss tended to fester like an open wound; it did things to people that rarely had positive consequences for any involved.

Instead, the woman’s eyes widened. She shook where she stood, unsure of her decision. Hajime waited for her to make it, patient as the tall, ancient trees that had once grown around his home.

A long moment stretched between them. Two, perhaps.

Without a word, the woman ran for it. She turned tail and ran into the trees, in the direction her fellow raider had disappeared before the fight.

Sometimes they come back for Hajime. Sometimes hey follow him and wait for him to let his guard down or they sneak into his camp while he’s sleeping, hoping for an easier shot at ending his life. Something tells him that she won’t be one of them, though.

From the opposite direction, the bushes rustled once more.

Wide, dark eyes stared out at Hajime from the foliage. When she saw it was safe, Natsu stepped out past the tree line, a shock of orange, leaf-covered hair emerging from the shadows.

She glanced quickly in both directions before running quickly to Hajime’s side, clutching her wooden sword like a lifeline. “Is she gone?” She asked him, suspicion coloring her words.

“Yes,” Hajime answered. He looked at the would-be raiders scattered across the ground in various stages of incapacitated. She wouldn’t be back. “It’s safe for you to go home now. You should head back before it gets any darker."

“But the woods are _already_ dark, Hajime-sama,” Natsu said, reaching up. Her hand fisted in Hajime’s surcoat, clutching it tightly. He shot Natsu a sharp look at the honorific, but she didn’t backtrack to change the form of address.

“Won’t you come with me?” She asked, eyes blinking up at him in faux-innocence.

He really shouldn’t. Yukigaoka was already at enough risk with him just being this close to the town’s outskirts.

“Please?” Natsu asked quietly, almost as a whisper. She snuck wide-eyed – overplayed, in Hajime’s opinion – glances at the forest and the quickly setting sun.

Hajime gently released Natsu’s hand from his surcoat and held it in his own.

“Ok,” he said, and Natsu’s face lit up like the dawn. It was a family trait, from what he’d observed. “But you have to lead the way back,” Hajime warned with more gravitas than the words called for, “it’s been so long since I last visited Yukigaoka that I might get lost.”

Natsu giggled, hiding her laugh behind her sword hand before leading him out of the clearing and through the trees.

“You _have_ been gone for a long time Hajime-sama.”

Hajime sighed. “What did I tell you about–”

“While you were gone, did you fight any _monsters?_ ” Natsu cut him off, words rushed with excitement as her mouth broke into an expectant grin.

Hajime just smiled. “Of course. Huge, scary ones, with teeth bigger than you.”

“ _Dragons?_ ” Natsu gasped.

To be fair, if Hajime _had_ seen a dragon, he would have been just about as excited as Natsu looked. Dragons were _amazing._

“Yes, _dragons_ ,” Hajime said, “they come out in the forest at night, to gobble up small children who don’t go home before dark.”

He raised an eyebrow. Natsu looked down, shamefaced.

“Sorry, Hajime-sama,” she muttered.

“Don’t be sorry, just don’t do it again.” He ruffled Natsu’s hair. “Besides, if I remember correctly, you’re going to be learning how to use this–” he reached over to tap her practice sword, “in a couple of months. If you’d like, I could even help out with your training.”

Natsu’s expression had shot right back to wide-eyed, though this time it was with excitement.

_“Really?”_

“Yes, really. I helped train your brother, didn’t I?”

Natsu nodded eagerly.

“But!” Hajime said, letting the word hang between them as Natsu stared with rapt attention, “You have to promise me that you won’t go into the woods by yourself at dusk anymore – I won’t always be here if there are more bandits.”

“I won’t, Hajime-sama. I promise! But… can we start tomorrow?”

They had almost reached the edge of town. Scattered torches and lanterns had already been lit in anticipation of the impending night. They illuminated the nearby forest with a warm, orange glow.

When they reached Yukigaoka’s gate, the guard took a second longer than normal to recognize them before he nodded and waved them through.

“Ask your parents,” Hajime laughed, letting Natsu run on ahead into town. She waved an enthusiastic goodbye at him before disappearing into the tangled maze of buildings. Hopefully she wouldn’t get up to any more mischief before her parents found her.

Hajime stood there a moment, in the middle of the opened gate, and glanced back at the waiting forest for a long, deliberative moment.

When the guard started speaking, it was so unexpected that Hajime nearly jumped out of his own skin.

“Yukigaoka’s own knight-errant, after a long day of rescuing small children from the monster-infested forest, contemplates running right back into it to hide from his problems,” the guard said. Hajime looked over sharply; he knew that voice.

The guard was almost smirking. “Do me a favor: don’t.”

Beneath the nondescript armor of Yukigaoka’s town guards was a man Hajime hadn’t thought he’d have to meet with for another few years. He nearly hadn’t recognized Daichi without ever-present orange and black sigils of his usual armor.

Hajime scowled at him, but Daichi remained unfazed.

“What are you doing so far from the Capitol, Daichi? Why are you incognito, Daichi? I know, I know; you have questions,” Daichi said, far more enthusiastically than someone guarding a town several levels below his pay grade should sound.

He wouldn’t have given Hajime a smile _nearly_ that smug a few years ago, back when Hajime first stumbled across Karasuno’s border with a fugitive in tow. He’d been nothing but professional at the time, of course, but a decade gone by without incident and the knowledge that he could destroy Hajime with only a carefully worded letter to the west must have given him a certain amount of confidence in his control over the situation.

But the last he’d heard, Daichi had gone on some sort of mysterious quest and had left his second, Ennoshita, in charge of the royal guard. Hajime _highly_ doubted that there had been such fanfare over Daichi sneaking out to patrol Karasuno’s border towns. He must have returned in an official capacity, then.

And his quest must have turned up _something_ ; there would be no other reason for Daichi to be playing night guard to _Yukigaoka_ , of all places.

“Save it,” Hajime said, “I don’t _want_ to know.”

Not that he didn’t have a good guess or three. It wasn’t _exactly_ a secret that, of all the towns and villages within Karasuno’s borders, Hajime stalked the woods around the smallest, easternmost one of them.

The Lady Michimiya and her court knew he was there, of course, as well as most of the capital’s higher-ranking military officers.

It wasn’t like he wanted them to think he’d come here to start another war, after all.

But… his presence wasn’t exactly public knowledge, either. He had few illusions about how quickly most places in Karasuno – even those as far from the war as Yukigaoka had been – would turn on him if his name and his past were to find him here.

“Walking away isn’t really an option on this one,” Daichi said, smiling sympathetically. “It’s a, well… a _diplomacy issue_ with our western ‘neighbors.’ You’re needed. Prince’s orders.”

“Yeah? _Which_ prince?” Hajime muttered, even though he was certain he already knew.

“Kageyama.” The way he said it was short and clipped, a faint annoyance at Hajime’s unnecessary question filtering through Daichi’s tone.

Hajime squinted, tensing. “Haven’t I done enough for him?” He scowled, hand instinctually drifting to the pommel of the small dirk he carried at his hip.

“That isn’t how he sees it.” Daichi said, looking like he really, _really_ didn’t want to be having this conversation. “And you know what it’s like arguing with the Prince…”

No, actually. Hajime didn’t. The last time they’d spent a significant amount of time in each others’ company, there had been more pressing matters than petty arguments.

Hajime wouldn’t have been surprised if his glare were enough to set Daichi’s innocuous, emblem-less cape on fire, but he hadn’t felt even a spark of heat rising within him, so he doubted he actually could at the moment.

“I can do you one better,” he said, instead, voice rising in frustration, “do you want to know what happened last time I lost an argument with–”

“Not so–!” Daichi must have realized they were just a step away from a loud, attention-drawing argument. He glanced around surreptitiously, lowering his own voice once he realized Hajime hadn’t bothered to finish yelling that sentence.

“Not so loud. And not _here_ ,” he whispered, making the hand motion that, at least on continent of Sendai, had come to mean _we don’t know who’s listening._

Hajime lowered his own voice, but he didn’t take his hand off his dagger.

“If it’s a _diplomatic_ issue, why aren’t you talking to the ‘ambassador’?” Hajime gestured farther into the town, towards a distant hill topped by a small compound built from marginally better materials than the buildings below it.

This time, it was Daichi’s turn to glare. “Even his fawning, over-muscled guard doesn’t call him that, anymore. Besides, you of all people should know it’s too far gone for that. Has been for, oh, about the last _decade_. But you would know all _about_ that.”

Hajime scoffed. “Has Aobajousai been making suspiciously well-informed inquiries into my whereabouts? Or, wait. Has the Northern King just been _hiding_ this entire time and somehow managed to raise an army out of the ash heap that used to be Shiratorizawa?”

Daichi’s expression was fraught, but he shook his head.

“No?” Hajime asked, tone falsely cheerful. “Well, in that case, I am not, in fact, _needed_. I appreciate the offer, but tell Tobio that I didn’t save his life to see him lose it in some sort of idiotic campaign against–” He cut himself off. Some names were best not spoken aloud, _especially_ when they didn’t know who – or what – might be listening. “Well, against you know who.”

Hajime turned to go, making to march straight back out of town. A hand stopped him, fingers digging into the edges of his armor. “Wait!” Daichi hissed.

“Just hear us out ok? We were going to wait to tell you, but since you’re _determined_ to leave before you even see the Prince… well I guess it can’t be helped.”

Hajime raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t try to break Daichi’s hold.

“Princess Yui was taken,” Daichi said, his voice steeped in worry, “the night before last, from right in the middle of the royal castle. By _Him_. No one knows Aobajousai like you; Kageyama doesn’t remember it well enough, and the alliance brought the army _north_ for the war, not west. The royal guard needs everyone it can muster to rally the Capitol’s defenses in case of an attack, so I _cannot_ be there to protect him. Like it or not, you’re the only one who can help him get her out of there without getting killed in the process, _General Iwaizumi_.”

Hajime’s muscles tensed, he drew the dagger out by only a finger’s length, but the torchlight glinted menacingly off the dark iron of the blade.

“Do _not_ call me that,” Hajime growled.

Daichi released his shoulder, taking a quick step backward.

“Look,” he started, and Hajime would bet his sword that he heard something of Prince Sugawara’s most pacifying, guilt-inducing tone in it. “You don’t _have_ to help. Just stay the night, and we’ll talk about it in the morning. If you hear what Kageyama has to say and still want to stay out here ignoring the problem _you_ had a hand in causing, you’re free to leave.”

Hajime narrowed his eyes. The flame of a nearby lantern flickered, nearly guttering out in a stiff breeze. The sun had set fully, and the shadows cast by torchlight and the open gate had grown long.

“ _Fine_ ,” he spat, re-sheathing the dirk. “Once you manage to drag the prince away from his morning milk, you know where to find me.” He was already walking away, further into the village, by the time he’d finished talking.

If Daichi had any response, Hajime didn’t stay to hear it.

With the gate receding into the distance, he wound his way past dark windows and shadowed alleys. He spoke quietly to the occasional patrol of guards, but not at length.

His head spun with Daichi’s message.

It didn’t make sense; there had been ten years of silence and _now,_ suddenly, without so much as a messenger or a threatening letter, Tooru had managed to kidnap Karasuno’s reigning monarch out of her own heavily guarded castle.

Hajime touched his hand to his chest, the dull ache sparking and spreading like flame set to spilled oil. Not enough to glow, to be noticeable. But enough to make his blood feel as if it were boiling in his chest.

He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it; he didn’t want to think about what might be happening to her in Seijoh’s dungeons.

Hajime walked faster, shifting his pack and broadsword higher on his back as he began the climb up the stairs leading to the house on the hill. The compound itself was probably locked up for the night, but that wasn’t where Hajime was headed. Adjacent to it, the property’s barn would be unlocked.

After he crested the hill, it was only a short walk across well-maintained grass before he reached his destination. To Hajime’s ears, his footsteps echoed loud against the quiet buildings of the estate.

He pushed the barn doors apart just enough to slip through the gap and closed them behind him. They shimmered as he swung them shut; the wards would alert him if anyone tried to enter or interfere with his sleep. In the rafters, the scarce light reflected off of dozens of wide, round eyes.

The owls stared at him unblinkingly, but they didn’t move to chase him off.

Hajime’s pack flew across the room to land by a suspiciously bed-shaped pile of hay, and he set about the long, complicated process of removing his armor. It wasn’t really _made_ to be taken off by one person alone. When he’d first received it, that hadn’t been an issue. Now… now Hajime had made certain modifications to it that made it easier, if not quite efficient.

The surcoat went first, draped over a nearby hitching post that hadn’t seen much use in recent years, and the harder pieces of armor followed it. The breastplate, pauldrons, and greaves he laid out neatly on a nearby table, but by the time Hajime got to the mail, he was tired enough to just drape it over a convenient chair.

The leathers were stacked next to it, but Hajime left the thin, cotton layer closest to his skin. It provided some protection, at least, from the itchiness of the straw when he collapsed into it, pulling his limbs away from the edges and trying to get comfortable.

It was easier said than done. Hajime turned one direction, then the other, shifting to find a position relaxing enough for him to drift off.

Sleep remained elusive, but Hajime’s though process was omnipresent. Worry and nerves ate at him, dogging his quickly failing attempt to rest. He wasn’t even supposed to be in town, but somehow he had been convinced to stay the night.

What was he _doing?_

Hajime sighed, disappointed in himself. But the hay was dry and warmer than the forest floor.  Here, at least, he could sleep out of his armor, without wasting supplies on creating his own wards. And he found that, though these were simple luxuries, he was not strong enough to pass them up for yet another night.

Was it this weakness – this reliance on _comfort_ – that had led to so much ruin?

In the morning, he would talk to the banished prince. Part of Hajime wanted to think he’d be able to tell Tobio to go fuck himself and be done with it. That he could just walk back out into the forest and submerge himself in his carefully maintained anonymity. That he would never have to face up to his past, if he just ran far enough.

The rest of him knew better; Hajime had never been able to let this sort of thing lie.

Least of all when Tooru was involved.

**…**

Sleep was long-coming. But once it finally managed to drag him under, its currents were deep and unrelenting. Hajime twisted and turned; restless and plagued.

Haunted.

“Why do you fight it?” The shadow asked, again. Just like it did every night Hajime slept without the proper wards. But hadn’t he set…?

One of the shadow’s hands rested gently against his cheek, its thumb softly stroking the thin, sleepless skin beneath Hajime’s eye.

The other one was knuckles-deep in his chest, cracking open his sternum.

He winced at the pain of it, the cold, insubstantial fingers clawing their way beneath his ribcage, closer to –

Not-quite-there lips pressed against the corner of his mouth, lingering in a slow smile. He wrenched his head back. “Why don’t _you?_ ” He demanded, glaring.

The shadow laughed and leaned down to bite a hole in Hajime’s lip. It might have been a kiss; it was hard to tell with the teeth.

In his chest, the thing’s hand found purchase and dug its way around his lungs, wrapping its cold grip around the beating pulse of Hajime’s heart –

“Because you’re _mine_ , Iwa-chan,” the shadow said, bleached-bone teeth set in a vicious, hollow smile. “No matter how far you run, you can’t change that.”

– and _pulled_.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to scream with/at me about volleyball dorks (or overwrought, unnecessarily dark takes on the FHQ au), I have a tumblr for writing and fandom weirdness [here](https://vellaphoria.tumblr.com/) \- come say hi!


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